She’s always at the center of that room, suspended several feet above the carpet and revolving constantly. An electric blue light washes out from her, although no one knows what causes it. And her eyes are always closed, in spite of which she can see everything that happens in this town, some stuff that is happening outside it, and a short distance into the future too. She had foreseen the coming of the Shadow Man, and what she’d said about him still sent shudders down my spine.
Something else began to bother me, as I drove back through the silent, whitened streets. I’d already been disconsolate about the time of year, the season. But that was being replaced – by now – with misgivings a good deal worse.
There were some kids out playing in their front yards. A few hardy types trudging back from the stores with bulging bags of produce. Driveways empty where inhabitants had driven off to work.
But everywhere that I looked, there were Yuletide decorations. There was tinsel around porches, strings of bright lights hanging from a load of roofs. The schools were closed. A lot more kids had to be indoors than out. Working days were getting shorter as the Landing wound down for the holidays.
This was mid-morning. The sky had clouded over again in the last half hour, the brightness of dawn yielding to a pallid and unappetizing gray. And almost every house had at least one lit window.
Raine’s Landing’s inhabitants were generally at home. And that was precisely where this brand-new threat was making itself apparent.
Most people in town were in the wrong place at the wrong time, and they didn’t even know it.
We finally hit a patch of ice, the rear end of my Caddy going out a little. I fought to control it, and then concentrated on getting us to Bethany Street as fast as was humanly possible.
We squeaked to a halt in front of number 51.
“That’s odd,” I said, my eyebrows lifting.
“What?” Willets asked.
The house’s front yard was buried under snow, the gaily-colored flowers lost from view. And the same was true of the Chrysler parked out on the drive. Nobody had cleared it since the snows had started. You could only see a section of its tires and its aerial sticking out. But I paid no mind to any of that. I nodded at the front door of the place instead.
“It’s usually slightly open,” I told the doc. “Has been, every time I’ve been here. Now it’s shut.”
Willet’s forehead twisted slightly.
“And you think that’s significant?” he asked me.
“First time that it’s been like that, is all I know.”
We made our way to the porch, our shoes crunching and our breath like gossamer in front of us. I gave the door a light push and, sure enough, it was firmly closed.
“What do we do about it?” Willets asked.
I pushed the bell. I wasn’t sure what good that would do, since I didn’t know if the Little Girl could even leave her room. Could she float down those stairs, or unfasten the latch using only her mind? There were no answers to those questions, not that any of us knew.
I waited, but got no reaction. So I went for a more direct approach, banging with my fist against the wood. Then I took a couple of steps back, peering at the upstairs windows.
“Hey!” I yelled. “What’s going on?”
Had we caught her at a bad time?
“It’s me! I need your help, right now!”
Willets tugged at my sleeve. He was pointing at a little painted gate to one side of the house. I’d never paid it much attention before. But I could see what he was thinking. It had to lead around to the back, where the Little Girl’s room was located.
Icicles were melting slightly on the inner gutters. And the snow around this side of the house had turned to a gray sludge. The backyard was pristine, though, its thick white covering untouched.
But when I looked up, my mind became tightly focused on one single detail.
The drapes at the nursery window were tightly drawn, as usual. But a little light was filtering out around their edges.
It was not the usual bright electric blue.
It was that same peculiar violet we’d been encountering this entire morning.
And – since we’ve not the faintest idea what the Little Girl is capable of, how much power she has or how far it extends – that wasn’t really what you’d call a pleasing sight.
Was she responsible for this? Or was there something else involved?
I stared up coldly, a whole string of similar questions colliding in my fuddled brain. And Willets did the same, equally baffled.
Or at least, we did that till a section of the house’s wall – directly in front of us – started rippling.
Another hole began to open.
Something else was coming through.
CHAPTER EIGHT
And when I say ‘something,’ I’m using the term as loosely as possible. That word might cover an awful lot of ground, but nothing quite on this scale.
It emerged from the hole with a smooth sliding motion, like mauve paint being squeezed out from a giant tube. The thing was mostly cylindrical, and was genuinely massive.
I couldn’t see the whole of it, at first. Largely the front of its head, which was as big as a truck tire. It was concave, and seemed to be all mouth. All teeth. Sharply pointed, triangular ones. Whole concentric rings of them, spinning around like circular saws, fizzing and spitting as they clacked against each other. Each ring looked like it was turning in a different direction.
And combined, they looked capable of grinding up pretty much anything that stood in their path. For the briefest moment, I felt unsure whether this was animal or a machine.
But then I noticed several other salient points. The body stretching out behind the head was slightly flatter than I’d first thought, and gelatinous. And it terminated in three whip-like tails, with stingers on them.
And at the centre of those whirring rings of teeth, there was a blinking, purple eye.
Shock surged through my body and my blood was running colder. I couldn’t even figure out how this thing was propelling itself. It was floating slowly through the air. There were no wings or membranes that I could make out. Its body simply seemed to pulse, and that pushed it in our direction.
How could anything like this come barging out into the regular world with no real warning whatsoever?
It sounded like Willets agreed, because the man yelled, “Holy hell!”
He staggered back a few paces, and then froze up entirely. I’d have liked to do the same, but did not allow myself that luxury. I yanked out my Smith & Wesson and started taking potshots at the apparition.
I could see sparks fly where my bullets struck the teeth, but there was no other effect. Which raised the question, were my shots ricocheting off … or was this sonofabitch eating them?
It ambled casually over to us, treating the air like it was water. Something that the doc had said came back to me, about the usual rules no longer applying. The sound that it was making was one of the most ominous things I’d ever heard. And the only course of action left for us was to retreat.
But Willets finally came around, raising both his palms. And a brace of flaringly red energy bolts shot out. Except we weren’t dealing with any oversized arachnids this time.
The flares hit the whirring teeth, and were absorbed by them as well. The creature kept on coming at us.
It didn’t look like it was in any kind of hurry, but it was closing the gap between us faster than was comfortable. So I grabbed the doctor by the sleeve. Got us moving steadily away, although it wasn’t easy. The further into the backyard we traveled, then the deeper the snow got.
It was above our knees before much longer, slowing us down to a leaden crawl. And tall wooden fences surrounded us on three sides. There was no obvious way of getting past them. The doc had better do something real fast, or he’d have to spirit us both out of here.
I hated the thought of running away, but when there is no choice …
I looked at my co
mpanion’s face and saw a familiar expression, in spite of the pressure we were under. An idea had come to him
“Move as far away from me as you can, and cover your eyes!” he ordered.
Concept one I had no problem with. But the thought of shutting off my sight while something was still trying to eat me …
If bullets weren’t working and neither were those red flares, maybe some even stronger magic would. I wondered what he had in mind. Then stopped doing that, and flailed away to the rear fence.
When I turned back, the man was floating ten feet in the air. And I could finally see where this was leading. I could feel my face going rigid, and my mouth went dry with apprehension.
Like I said, he’d taught himself this kind of magic. But its power had overwhelmed him in those early days. He had become manic, not to mention messianic. Tried to get himself a group of followers and pass his knowledge on to them.
They’d died instead. He’d tried to pass on too much of his magic, far too quickly, and had burnt them all to cinders. An accident, but dead was dead. It was why he was a hermit these days. He couldn’t forgive himself.
But that whole thing had started with him floating up beyond arm’s reach, the same way he was right now doing.
The creature was directly underneath him. And it stared across at me at first, its eye blinking slowly. But then its huge head tilted up. It had noticed there was someone closer by. Its massive body curved up, and it started to drift higher.
Willets’s eyes no longer held a tiny dot of crimson. They had both turned searing red from lid to lid. His prematurely aged face was crumpled up, and he was holding both his arms entirely stiffly.
His mouth was wide open, and his tongue curled back.
I barely remembered his second instruction in time. Wasn’t able to cover my eyes, but at least I shut them. The brilliance that lanced down from him seared right through my eyelids anyway.
I winced. Turned my face away, throwing an arm across it.
And when I was able to look back, the beast was gone, though there was no visible dead body and not even any debris.
And the hole it had emerged from – it had closed up tight.
Willets had descended by the time I stumbled back. His cheeks were drained of blood, and he was rubbing at them. His expression was exhausted. And his eyes – which had returned to normal – had a faraway and haunted look.
I understood what was tearing at him. He’d been genuinely afraid that, if he used that kind of power, he would lose his mind again. Both of us were grateful that it hadn’t gone that way.
“Holy hell,” he said again.
But far more quietly than before.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He nodded.
Then I stared back at the nursery window.
“Did she cause that?” I asked, meaning the Little Girl. “Did she sic that thing on us?”
Willets peered up at the window with a studied manner. Then his gaze became a little puzzled, and he pursed his lips.
“I don’t believe so.”
“Are you sure of that?”
“I don’t think she had anything to do with it, directly,” he said. “It’s still unclear, but this close up … I can sense no evil intent up there in the slightest.”
And then he paused. His temples became deeply furrowed, and his eyes narrowed to tiny slits.
“I can sense someone else inside that nursery, besides the Girl,” he told me.
He was obviously struggling to identify who it might be. Then his gaze became a whole lot sharper. So it appeared he had pinned it down.
“Good God alive!” he breathed. “There’s another girl! A second one!”
“What exactly are you talking about?” I asked, peering at him worriedly.
His gray head was shaking.
“I’m not sure. But I can definitely sense a second presence, young and female. And the pair of them have somehow become bonded.”
“Well, that’s great,” I pointed out annoyedly. “That pretty much explains everything. We can go home now.”
Willets frowned at my show of impatience.
“Something extraordinary has happened up there, Ross, and you want instant answers?”
“Fairly quick ones would be nice.”
He took that in his stride, then drew himself up straight and sucked in such a deep breath that his chest thrust out. The man looked as if he’d come to some kind of decision.
“I’m going to attempt something that I’ve never tried before,” he told me. “I am going to try and contact the mind of the Little Girl.”
A protest started pushing up my throat, but never reached my lips. It didn’t have the time to
Because Willets went static. And I don’t only mean that he was standing still. His body became like a sculpture, not the slightest perceptible twitch or quiver. And his face was like a solid mask. His eyes, wide open, didn’t blink. In fact, his eyeballs had stopped moving, and they’d taken on the oddest glaze.
I stepped part of the way around the man. And he looked precisely the same from every angle.
Lehman Willets’s body might be standing there in front of me.
But his spirit had gone elsewhere.
CHAPTER NINE
His consciousness drifted for a fleeting second. And then Lehman Willets found himself standing on a level plain of brilliantly gleaming whiteness that stretched out for incredible distances around him. He waited for his vision to adjust. But there was no perceptible horizon that he could discern, however fiercely he peered.
And then he realized he could make out darker moving patches off in each direction. When he looked directly at them, they suddenly sprang into close, tight focus, though he couldn’t understand how that was possible.
They were each a scene from a different part of town, and how could that be?
The first one he looked at was of Ross Devries, still out in the backyard and moving unhappily around the doctor’s own immobile form. It was odd to see yourself in such a strange condition. Rather like one of those ‘floating above your body’ experiences that people talked about having when they’d been lying in sick beds. But in terms of distances viewed, this wasn’t really much of a stretch.
The second vision was of Union Square. The snow had recently been cleared, but nothing much else was going on.
The third was in a bar on O’Connell called Nadine’s. It was empty save for its owner, a woman with brightly dyed hair. She was cleaning glasses, humming to a record on a nearby jukebox. With the temperature the way it was, the entire town was running in neutral.
The fourth was of Judge Levin in his chambers at the courthouse, thumbing through a hefty legal book. Willets felt a smile come to his lips. He liked the man, and was unsurprised to see that the snow had not deterred him from his job.
The fifth was of Ritchie Vallencourt, lying on a bed at Raine General. They’d found no toxins in his system, but he was being kept under sedation. And it wasn’t the spider attack that had made that necessary. His mental stress was all down to his missing wife. Those little cousins of theirs as well. They …
Willets halted, figuring out what was really happening. He wasn’t merely observing things in a visual sense. He was perceiving them too, understanding each new vision that came to him. Looking at stuff the way the Little Girl had to, on a far deeper level than was normal.
There were thousands of these scenes. And that was merely in the town. But the Little Girl could see outside as well.
He caught sight of a long, straight road, automobiles and trucks going carefully along it. It was barely half a mile from the edge of Raine’s Landing, but most of this community was not even aware of it.
And then his gaze lifted higher and further. He could actually see Boston, the town he’d lived in before he’d come here. That was the Common he could make out, and he felt his heart leap momentarily. He’d loved going there in the springtime and the fall, when he’d been working as a lecturer in that c
ity.
Willets moved up closer, looking through the window of an office block. He caught sight of a slim blond woman walking past a row of desks, a thick file tucked beneath one arm.
Good Lord, that was Lauren Brennan, the homicide lieutenant who had helped them beat the Shadow Man. Was the Little Girl keeping an eye on her into the bargain?
There were some scenes from the past as well. Ross going in the river with the monster called the Dralleg. Cassie defeating one of the Four Horsemen. Lawrence L. DuMarr turning into a dragon, albeit a harmless one. And additionally, there appeared to be a few scenes that, by the look of them, were coming from the future. It was nice to know that this town had one.
This was simply incredible!
There was such a rush of information, such a plethora of different scenes and happenings and events, that his temples began to pound, studying just a handful of them. And this was what the Little Girl saw the whole time? It was scarcely believable that one small mind could cope with it.
“But it can’t be impossible, because I do it,” said a gentle, high-pitched voice above him.
The sky up there was full of electric blue and glowing violet, coruscating streaks of each, constantly merging and intermingling in a massive storm of color. And as he watched, a couple of the blue streaks stabilized. They drifted to each other, and took on the shape of a pair of lips. Which started moving like a normal mouth.
“You’re Dr. Willets, aren’t you?” they remarked. “You’ve helped this town a lot, and saved a good number of lives, including Mr. Ross.”
He wasn’t quite sure how to answer, so he stood there dumbly.
“And yet you still blame yourself for those people whose deaths you caused. You shouldn’t, sir. You didn’t mean to do it.”
And her words had a peculiar effect on him. He felt compelled to tell her the entire truth.
“I can still see their faces,” he sighed, “every time I close my eyes.”
The blue lips smiled.
“That may be true, but you are missing something, sir. I wish that you could hear their voices too. They’re saying, ‘we forgive you.’”
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